Port of CallBlog of the Library & Archives Department

Category: Library & Archives

The year 1907 marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of the settlement at Jamestown and a grand exhibition was hosted in Norfolk to mark the occasion. Globe-trotting journalist Edward Hungerford was one of those in attendance and The Mariners’ Museum Library has recently digitized some of his works in our possession about the event.

The Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition ran from April 26 – November 30, 1907. This impressive model city was built at Norfolk’s Pine Beach with the idea to capitalize on the craze in American popular culture at the time for pageantry and have something like a World’s Fair for Hampton Roads. Today Pine Beach is part of Norfolk Naval Base and some of the grounds have since given way to a golf course and other functions for the base. However some original buildings still remain having been re-purposed into the officers’ club and admiral’s quarters.Read more

Screen grab from “Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco,” digitized by Library of Congress

Imagine the cruelty of being trapped on a prison ship to Australia, your sadistic captors torturing you on the rack or lashing you with the cat o’ nine tails as undulating seas heave and pitch. The convict vessel Success was one such ship of horrors… Step Right Up! Pay a fee, and you too can see the show!

If all this sounds a little bit like a huckster trying to get you into a circus sideshow, then you’re right. It is!Read more

Counted among the heroes of World War II are a few whose exploits became the stuff of legend, there you will find Merrill’s Marauders. Officially known as the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), but best remembered by their catchy nickname given them by a war correspondent, the unit’s special mission was to unite with Chinese and British allies in Burma, east of India, in order to harass and disrupt the Japanese Army’s offensive. The conditions in Burma were unbelievably harsh, not only were they out manned and outgunned by the Japanese, but they had to contend with exceptionally rugged terrain and tropical disease.

The six men pictured below were part of the 5307th and survived the brutal Burma Campaign. A Signal Corps photographer shot this photo as the men passed through Hampton Roads on their way home, December 26, 1944. The caption on the print labels them, “suicide outfit.”Read more

If you previously volunteered or interned at The Mariners’ Museum Library and have gone on to work in the museum or library field, we would love to hear from you. Please send a brief email to Bill Barker (bbarker@marinersmuseum.org) with an update on your career. Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you.

The majority of our collection about the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation consists of still photography produced by the Army Signal Corps. However there are some moving pictures as well, including some shots made by the US Navy on June 3, 1943. A copy of the 35mm film is housed at The Mariners’ Museum and another copy belongs to the National Archives and Records Administration who has digitized the movies and uploaded them to a public online database. Much to our delight a retired librarian with the screen name WWIIPublicDomain has been going through the database and putting some of it on YouTube where it can be more easily found by the general public.

Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation sent and received millions of men and millions more tonnes of cargo, most of it bound to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. These short clips document the 45th Infantry Division embarking from Newport News destined for the invasion of Sicily, code name Operation Husky.Read more

Featured Posts

One of the greatest unsolved sinking mysteries of the U.S. Navy is the story of USS Cyclops, a steel twin screw collier that went missing during World War I, rumored to have disappeared within the Bermuda Triangle. Our Artifact of the Month is actually a chest from Cyclops, which was donated to the museum in September 1941. Unfortunately, nothing was found within the sea chest, which was found under the donor’s home in Norfolk, Virginia in 1926.

Greetings readers, and welcome back to the Library blog. As we delve deeper into the realm of piracy, a lot of potentially confusing terms are used to make sense of the men and women who struggled over wealth in the late 17th and early 18th century Caribbean. Terms like Pirate, Buccaneer, and Privateer crop up with noticeable frequency, and are often used as synonyms. However, each of these terms has a separate and distinct meaning, even if the people these terms are applied to are too complex for any one title. Therefore, I would be happy to tell you the difference between a Buccaneer, a Pirate, and a Privateer.

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